Silver Linings
by Immortal x Snow
Summary: Life is awful sometimes, but I can always find a silver lining when I'm home with you. [livejournal 10 hurt comfort challenge for Sherlock & John. No slash, just lots of fluff and h/c.]
1. Chapter 1

**Prompt:** The line is blurred.

 **A/N:** Because I always write fics when I don't have time to.

I was inspired to tackle the 10_hurt_comfort challenge on livejournal. My chosen prompt table consists of 10 prompts, all about lines. Hence the fic title (thanks, vickitata14!).

* * *

"I am not drunk. My BAC is precisely 0.06."

"You failed Lestrade's sobriety test, Sherlock."

"Only because of its inherent flaws in design, including, but not limited to, the presumption that the nystagmus in my eyes was because of intoxication. When, in fact, it was because I was looking around gathering information about the crime scene."

John raised an eyebrow before leaning back in his lumpy armchair and taking a sip of his hot tea. Sherlock plucked the strings of his violin with low _twangs_ while his gaze shifted from John to the kitchen and then back to John.

It was the breath test that Sherlock had failed, in fact, not the nystagmus test. But John knew better than to pester his friend about the specifics of why exactly he'd gotten a lecture from Lestrade about drinking before cases and then been sent home until the next morning. The most important thing was Sherlock's little BAC experiment—something he most certainly would have stopped, had he heard even a whisper about it in advance—hadn't gotten them in trouble. The worried over-the-shoulder glances Lestrade had given Sherlock as they left to catch a cab had more than convinced John of his concern. Which was far more important than any frustration he may have harbored toward the detective.

"You could've just done the urine sample and gotten it over with, you know."

"No."

John sighed. He wondered when and if he could get a glass of water in his friend. It would really help his grumpiness and his inebriation. And John needed the relief right now perhaps a little bit more than Sherlock did.

"Well, you could've at least held off on telling Greg his wife wasn't in love with him."

Sherlock squinted at John, his mouth slightly open.

"I don't, I don't know what you're talking about. Who's Greg?"

"Oh, never mind, you clot." John finished his tea and padded off on soft slippered feet to the kitchen. He rinsed out the mug in the sink, ignoring the blood stains on the edges of the drain. Even when the traces of red liquid swirled into the water and oozed down the sink, their thin crimson outlines remained. He was going to have to do something about them before Mrs. Hudson noticed. Heaven knew Sherlock wasn't going to scrub them out. "Never mind."

Sherlock blinked. He looked like a confused, adorable little boy when he did that, not that John ever planned to mention his friend's cuteness. He'd prefer to avoid all possible instances of humiliation.

"Not good?"

John turned off the faucet with a flick of his wrist. He glanced over his shoulder.

"Not good what?"

"About—about that Gavin guy and his cheating wife?" Sherlock rubbed his eyes.

John padded back to the living room, glad for the soft if itchy wool between his feet and the cold, creaky floor. He smiled at the thought of Mrs. Hudson snoring through the groaning of the boards a few meters above her head. The image in his mind and a yawn moments later reminded John that he ought to be getting to bed sometime soon, too.

He was just about to sink back into the inviting warmth of his chair when Sherlock patted the seat beside him on the couch (or tried to; he seemed to John to be slapping the cushions).

"Hm?"

"C'm over here."

"You're going to have to speak up, I'm afraid. I don't understand drunken mutters."

"You know what I mean, John, now come over here."

John obliged, though not without chuckling and making Sherlock roll his eyes. His friend smelled of alcohol, unwashed hair, and cologne all at once up close. The first two should have worried him, but he mostly frowned and tilted his head a little—even raised an eyebrow—at the third. He decided he'd better not ask. Didn't want to find out what experiment that warm musky smell came from.

"Before you make any drunken confessions of deep dark secrets, just let me remind you: you won't remember any of this, but I will, and—"

"Any minute now—ah, yes." Sherlock pressed his fingertips together and nodded. "Three, two…"

"Wait, wha—"

"One."

A moment later, Sherlock was flopped over in John's lap, fast asleep. Even snoring a little, his mouth open just the slightest bit. Even mumbling a little to himself and keeping himself close to John, as if trying to suck up all his warmth.

John just stared down at Sherlock. He couldn't even think of what to think now that he had this big bony lump of sleepy detective on top of him. Except, of course: well, there went his chances of getting to bed soon.

He set his elbow on the arm of the couch and leaned his cheek against his fist with a sigh. At that moment, the heater kicked on with a soft hum, like that of the dryers at the laundromat he went to with his mother as a child. The soothing sound, along with the deep, rhythmic breaths of his friend, made his eyelids heavier and heavier. He pulled the small blanket draped over the back of the couch over them both, although Sherlock quickly pulled all of the scratchy fabric off John and over himself.

Oh, well. He hadn't been all that cold, anyway. John did grumble a little, but then he settled against the back of the couch and closed his eyes.

And when Sherlock's hand fumbled around for his just before John dropped off to dreamland with him, he took it and pressed his thumb against Sherlock's palm.

He fell asleep in the middle of rubbing a small circle on the detective's hand.

* * *

 **A/N:** Next one should be fun: it's, "I walk the line." Ideas or requests? Just let me know. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Prompt:** Line drawn in the sand.

 **A/N:** Okay, I'm aware that 1. there is technically no sand involved, and 2. I cannot do prompts in order. Oh well.

* * *

Somehow, everything had gone wrong.

The train wreck that had been their afternoon had first gone off the rails that morning when Sherlock had broken a teacup. It had been a dumb thing to yell at him about, John knew, but he was tired, he was running late for work, and Sherlock had already broken two teacups that week and John really did not want to spend the money to buy more.

He could have just taken a deep breath, sighed, and told Sherlock to sweep up the shards so he didn't get glass in his feet (Heaven knew he never wore shoes if he could help it), but instead his lack of patience that morning had gotten the better of him.

And now he was kneeling in the mud having his patience tested once more.

Sherlock had been drawing in the mud, still cold and thick from yesterday's downpour, for hours now. At least, it felt like hours to John, who had been kneeling silently at his side the whole time he'd been scrawling crooked arrows and unreadable letters (he assumed they were letters) in the ground with his thin fingers.

John tucked his chapped hands into his coat once the wind began to blow. The small section of the park they'd wound up in smelled of fresh-cut grass, rain, and mud, all three scents seeming to freeze inside his nostrils.

"Come on, Sherlock," John said. "Your fingers are going to turn blue. Stop. You'll figure it out."

Not long after John had returned from work that afternoon, Lestrade had sent them off on a case. A quick one, Sherlock had said. One that'd only take a perfunctory glance at the crime scene, with time for chasing down the criminal, making an arrest, and having dinner at Angelo's afterward.

Yet here they were, deductions done and dusted, arrest warrants lined up, and absolutely no idea where the chap behind all the cloak-and-dagger shenanigans had escaped to.

It was that last piece of the puzzle that was driving the detective batty.

"Leave it up to Lestrade. He'll figure it out. We've worked out who did it already. Scotland Yard can do the rest."

Sherlock stopped his primitive mud doodles and sighed. John expected him to state the obvious: he'd much rather not leave this delicate work up to imbeciles; he wanted the satisfaction for himself; they shouldn't leave such a determined unstable psychopath on the loose; it'd be faster if they just took care of business themselves…

"Can't think."

"C'mon." John tugged on his gloves. Why couldn't they just suddenly grow long enough to cover that sliver of skin between his wrist and his coat sleeves? "You're Sherlock Holmes. Of course you can think."

No response other than a grunt. Sherlock began to draw arrows pointing in all directions: first straight ahead, then behind them; off to the left, off to the right, and finally at John.

"You could out-think anyone. You could out-think—oh, I don't know, and entire team of rocket scientists."

"How cliché."

John sighed. A day of practically not speaking to him and then he decides to break the silence with one of his quietly biting little smirk-ridden snides.

He shouldn't have expected anything different.

But maybe he'd wanted, hoped for something a little more.

"Talk to me."

"You don't want to listen." Another arrow straight ahead, another pointing back to John.

"Try me."

Silence. Harsher gusts of wind, stronger deep breaths of mud-and-dirty-hair stench. The grass was cold, prickly beneath John, on that naked spot on his arm.

But he waited.

"Why wouldn't I want to listen to you?"

"A multitude of reasons." John couldn't see Sherlock's face, but he could tell he was rolling his eyes. "But most likely teacups."

John took a breath as the harsh smash of glass on the linoleum from that morning returned to him, as if someone had broken the teacup anew.

"Still thinking 'bout that, are you?" John asked, his voice low and gentle.

"Still pissed at me, are you?"

"What?"

"Oh, do come on. It's not that complicated of a question." But Sherlock's tone struck John as considerably less self-assured than normal, the heaving smug sarcasm gone.

John frowned. The echo of the cheap cup shattering continued in his mind, but so did other details of the scene now emerging from his trove of memories. Himself shouting, taking unconscious steps forward (with his fists clenched) toward Sherlock. The nigh-imperceptible flinching that under different circumstances John would have written off as flaws in his memory from strange malfunctions of desire (maybe—maybe—he'd just wanted some kind of reaction from his friend).

"You think I'm angry with you about that." John almost cringed at himself. He really was the master of only the painfully obvious sometimes. He had, after all, been pissed at his friend that morning, but that had been the morning, and this was now, and they weren't at Baker Street anymore but here in the middle of a swampy park with his best friend drawing nonsense in the mud like a complete loon, and, fuck, now he had it figured out.

"You know I'm not angry anymore, right?" John scooted closer to Sherlock, still trying to keep his boots out of the soggy excuse for an open field. He considered putting a hand on his shoulder but decided he'd better keep his contact strictly verbal. "I was just in a mood this morning, and I let my temper get the better of me when I shouldn't have. But I'm not trying to excuse how I acted like a total dick to you, and, much as you might like me to, I'm not trying to rationalize any of this."

Sherlock still didn't look up. John heard his loud, rhythmic breathing, and in some mysterious way, found himself half-smiling that they were here. In the middle of an environmental travesty, but here. Together.

"What I mean, Sherlock, is that I'm sorry. Sorry for yelling at you and being rude."

The detective glanced at him. John couldn't quite read his gaze, but he could tell it was gentler—softer?—than usual.

For a few moments, he continued to doodle lopsided figures and crooked arrows in the mud. John waited at his side. Sheltering him from the wind.

Then, he took a breath and pressed his folded hands, still covered in mud, to his lips.

"He went down to Bayswater. Tube station. Probably by the ticket kiosks topping off his Oyster card."

Sherlock turned to John.

"If we're lucky, incompetent American tourists will delay him long enough. Let's go."

Sherlock jumped to his feet, adjusted his coat collar, and took another glance at John, whose half-smile had now become a full grin. Sherlock mirrored it.

And then they were off again.


End file.
